Coffee Vs. Dementia: A Couple Cups May Reduce Cognitive-Decline- HealthTrekker

coffee alzheimers espresso machine brewing

Photo: Blake Verdoorn, Unsplash

Coffee Vs. Alzheimer’s. A Few Cups A Day Is Looking Like A Great Habit To Have:

One of the most difficult things to deal with in life is something you feel you can do nothing about.

Well, one of the goals of this site is to try to help people avoid those situations in the first place.

And before we get our Artificial-Intelligence super-drugs in the year 2050, we have to take the best that SCIENCE! has to offer now.

One of those themes strangely-enough is exploration into the Freakonomics-like hidden benefits in all kinds of things.

-Like specific nutritional choices.

And if the current version of “Get your medicine from your food” is any indicator, everyone’s favorite drink just got another vote of confidence…

The Short Answer:

Until the machine-learning superdrug future saves us, we have to make-do with a combination of ancient wisdom and the research science can muster today.
That old saying about getting your medicine from your food was a good one.
One interesting dietary habit is a fondness for roasted things.
It turns out that dark-tasting food & drink has a lot of antioxdants and other much more helpful stuff in it.
Coffee is one of them.
Antioxidants may not work as first theorized, but they still help.
A small study was conducted in Australia over the course of 10 years.
It found that people who drank coffee had lower rates of cognitive-decline, MCI, and Alzheimers.
They also had better Executive Function, memory, planning, and attention.
Researchers theorize that coffee slows the accumulation of the Amyloid-Beta plaques in the brain that are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s Disease.
They also theorize at least 2 cups/day could slow cognitive decline by 8% and AB-accumulation by 5%.
You’d have to keep this up though, because the benefits seem to kick-in at about the 18 month mark.
This study did not look at Decaf vs. Caf, or brewing methods.
Other studies have attributed many of the benefits to caffeine.
Science has found at least 3 other beneficial compounds in coffee.
Two of them are associated with lower rates of cancer.
One of them is associated with lower rates of Parkinson’s Disease.
You would have to drink a type of coffee not made using a paper-filter to get these in your drink, though.
Be careful what you add to your coffee, as other work has found that cream/milk & sugar may negate some or all of coffee’s benefits.

Read on to find out the details…

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Our Fascination With Roasted Things Turns Out To Be Healthy:

And by “favorite drink”, no that does not mean Vodka.

So people have been singing the praises of Coffee and roasty drinks since 1450 and before.

Tea’s been a big deal for even longer.

And although nit-picker doctors were right about Antioxidants not making it all the way into your cells as was hoped,

They -were- wrong about their overall benefit.

Because even though it is possible to get too many antioxidants to the point it gives you The Big C,

Foods like Chocolate, Blueberries, Pomegranates, and our old friend Coffee turn out to be real stars.

Edith Cowan’s Small Coffee Study Has Big Results For Brain Health:

Which brings us around to a cognitive-decline study done in Australia.

In the small group, 200 Australians were coaxed away from their fistfights, barbie-shrimp, and Foster’s oil-cans long enough to examine their coffee-consumption.

They were then followed around for 10 years to track their cognitive health,

Which was also pre-selected for subjects who showed no memory-impairments at the beginning.

Over all that time, higher coffee consumption was found to be associated with lower rates of Mild-Cognitive-Impairment,

-And even Alzheimers!

Several Cups/Day Seems To Slow Down Cognitive Decline:

Along the way, subjects who drank coffee also showed better Executive Function, like planning, self-control, and the ability to focus and maintain attention.

It also appeared to slow accumulation of Alzheimer’s signature Amyloid-Beta plaques in the brain.

Two cups/day could also turn out to be better than just one; and that is also backed up by other work suggesting 4/day is the healthy maximum.

The researchers theorize this level of consumption could reduce rates of cognitive decline by 8%, and Amyloid-Beta accumulation by 5%.

You have to keep it up though, because they also say the benefits of 2 cups/day are likely to kick-in at ab out the 18 month mark.

As for other specifics, the researchers either did not test-for or examine differences between decaf & full-caf.

But other studies have suggested you may need to drink caffeinated coffee.

The work also did not take into account different brewing-methods, preparations, or additives.

Be Careful! Previous Work Found Other Factors Matter!:

This is really unfortunate, because other studies have shown they may make a difference.

Another work involving our new best friend, Machine Learning, suggested that adding cream or milk & sugar will negate most or all of the benefits of coffee.

This is backed up by studies that show milkfat increases cellular-aging, and sugar-consumption dumps all kinds of free-radicals into your body & bloodstream.

Those may then go on to neutralize the good phytochemicals in coffee before they can get around to helping your body.

Slightly more “out there”, but not as “out there” as the work on P27+ caffeine and its amazing effects on your body (at the end of this post),

Is the fact that the Aussie study also did not take into account brewing method.

Better Hang With The Euros, Because Brewing Method Might Be Huge:

Which is very curious, because there are at-least three more substances of interest found in coffee so-far.

These are:
1) Cafestol
2) Kahweol
and
3) Eicosanoyl-5-hydroxytryptamide, or EHT for short.

The first two are removed by any process using paper filters, like drip-style American coffee.

But if you have Turkish Coffee, Italian Espresso, French Press coffee or other methods that don’t use paper filters,

They stay in, and those two have been found to be associated with two slightly-opposite things,

And one of them is amazing.

The first is increased cholesterol in your blood.

But the second is, drumroll please, a lower incidence of Cancer!

Oh By The Way, It’s Associated With Lower Rates Of Something Else, Too:

Now that the huge benefit is out of the way, it’s probably an underwhelming statement to mention the third phytochemical, EHT.

That has been associated with lower rates of Parkinson’s Disease, especially the Lewy-body variant!

So, there are several other posts on the amazing effects of coffee, especially for anything cardio-related.

Which is an interesting phenomenon, because one of the most recent sayings in health is that, “Anything that’s good for the heart is also good for the brain.”

You can find the rest of those benefits in a superpost here and also in the section of the site devoted just to coffee.

After you go through those and their amazing findings, it might not be so much of a surprise anymore that researchers have found yet more benefits for coffee consumption, even for something like Alzheimer’s Disease!.